Wow, no answer yet.
I wouldn't want to mis-quote anyone, but I think this question has been answered in the past.
Crawdad

I must have missed that post or the reputation points on it was so low I couldn't read it. But I would still like to know, are the Private Messages private or are they scrutinized by anyone? Simple question = simple answer YES they are private NO they are not

It's a valid question Turf.
Let me assure that with over 24,000 members it would be near impossible to read the private messages. It would be way too time consuming. Who would want to do that? I openly admit that I have a hard time keeping up with all the emails I get daily, I would never want to take on the task of reading pm's on top of that. Now maybe with a much smaller site and a lot less members and a lot less posts & threads, maybe an administrator with too much time on their hands would read their members pm's. I can only speculate on that though.

It's a valid question Turf.
Let me assure that with over 24,000 members it would be near impossible to read the private messages. It would be way too time consuming. Who would want to do that? I openly admit that I have a hard time keeping up with all the emails I get daily, I would never want to take on the task of reading pm's on top of that. Now maybe with a much smaller site and a lot less members and a lot less posts & threads, maybe an administrator with too much time on their hands would read their members pm's. I can only speculate on that though.

If I am understanding your post, it is possible for you to read the PM's they are NOT private. It is just that you choose not to read the PM's.

ANY vbulletin format can read the private messages. I will not lie to you about that, because doing a simple search on vbulletin, you would be able to find this out. (I honestly did not know this for the longest longest time, and I don't think any other admin here knew it either.) I guess we are slow to catch on to some things. Since then, I have talked to other administrators (non green industry related), and if their forum is small and growing, they will read their members messages. The facts are simple here, we have too many members that it would drive an sane person crazy trying to read them.
And let me repeat once again: ANY vbulletin format can read their members messages. With us, our number speaks for themselves, any one should be able to plainly see that it would take a vast amount of time to do so here.

I'm sorry, I've been away most of the weekend - it's good to take breaks sometimes

There are no changes that are visible to the user. The only improvements that I did concern the way PMs are handled in the backend, mostly ways to reduce the risk of abuse of the PM system. This had to be done before we could bring the system back online.

Changes made - mostly techy-stuff Pierre would have to explain - safeguarding things and some code work.

PM's - Here is what I know - only administrators can read PM's. At LawnSite the only people with admin access are myself and Pierre. I highly doubt Pierre would ever care enough to read PM's and me personally, not only do I think it is wrong, but for the longest time I did not even know I had this access....and after Pierre made the software updates I still did not have the access.

ANY vbulletin format can read the private messages. I will not lie to you about that, because doing a simple search on vbulletin, you would be able to find this out. And let me repeat once again: ANY vbulletin format can read their members messages. With us, our number speaks for themselves, any one should be able to plainly see that it would take a vast amount of time to do so here.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Sean Adams

PM's - Here is what I know - only administrators can read PM's. At LawnSite the only people with admin access are myself and Pierre. I highly doubt Pierre would ever care enough to read PM's and me personally, not only do I think it is wrong, but for the longest time I did not even know I had this access....and after Pierre made the software updates I still did not have the access.

How is it two different stories?
They can be read by on any vbulletin forum, but like Sean said, Pierre wouldn't even begin to do that. He handles just the tech stuff, I doubt he is even familiar enough with the users to want to read the pms, and as Sean said, He thinks it is wrong so he wouldn't do it either. And then there is the time involved that it would take to do this task.